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Lance Reddick has crossed over, and poo poo fuckin' sucks. That dude from The Wire/John Wick/Destiny/Corporate/Wishing He Was LeVar Burton/Everything Good You Like with that voice passed away today, and out of an overwhelming sense of "oh yeahhhhh" I turned not to The Wire, like probably everyone else, but to FRINGE, a show that really let him breathe without forcing him to fully break from the serious, hardass Homeland Security Agent-in-Charge start that he had in the show. What's truly insane about this show, though, is how it got right out of the gate how good its core cast was and broke from the sort of "J.J. Abrams Puzzle Box"/"X-Files Monster-of-the-Week" trappings that were probably used to pitch it as a product of Lost-era network clone grabbing. Its lore goes very deep; they clearly had more than the first season mapped out, but it was smart enough to know that it could be more than the initial germ and grew into a pretty sprawling, fun, insanely hook-filled set of middle seasons that leaned into multiple timelines. I just forgot how fuckin' good this show is, and re-watching it from the beginning reminded me of how much I loved Lance Reddick because of this world and the characters in it. If you've never seen the show, definitely watch it, and if this thread actually gets any traction, I'll happily do it up as a re-watch thing with some actual effort. Give it just an episode or three (which are sadly Reddick-light), and try not to get hooked. You have no goddamn idea where it's going to go, but the ride is so very worth it. And if you've already seen it, take it from me: it's better than you remember. poo poo holds up - both as a product of its needlessly post-added lens-flared time and as a thing that's never really had a true analogue since. RIP, B-Royles.
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Mar 18, 2023 04:32
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Jerusalem posted:gently caress it, I never watched past the first season and the news about Lance Reddick made me feel miserable, so time to expand my exposure to the shows he was in and finally give the rest of it a go! The shift from first to second season is pretty huge; all the LEGO poo poo is there, but they rebuilt it in a new way without it losing the original shape. If more folks are actually game to talk through things, I'll just graft this into the OP along with poo poo like images and things to make it more than just an impromptu memorial, but the seasons sorta break down like this: [Season 1] Monster-of-the-Week/X-Files while establishing character quirks; Walter is a brilliant cook (I was going to fix this as a typo, but dude makes TONS of drugs on the show, so no, it's actually right), Peter is aloof until he needs to be plot-powered smart, Olivia is a capable-but-boring audience surrogate, Astrid is overlooked to everyone's detriment. Charlie is field work and very little else, sadly. Serialization was there from the start, and every episode builds toward "The Pattern" - a series of technology that pre-crazy Walter came up with and are being mis-used. [Season 2] Walter's work becomes more central and far-reaching and the grander plan of the show begins to foment; character dynamics deepen and the Olivia/Peter thing forms. Astrid is still secretly awesome in every way, but writers haven't noticed yet. Walter is even crazier, but in more entertaining ways because drugs and food are funny and awesome. The seasonal arc ends in possibly one of the coolest what-the-gently caress moments of any TV show that started with such a semi-procedural crime/monster start. [Season 3] Holy poo poo, this show is twice as good now. All actors get to stretch HARD and are all fully up to it in every way. [Season 4] 'Kay, running out of steam a little with the original concept, let's delve deeper into Walter's past. [Season 5] God drat, they knew the end was coming and there's a bit of a time jump in terms of stakes. It's good it got a real finish, I suppose? The meat in seasons 2 and 3 are so loving good that the rest are dressing or goofy attempts at putting the puzzle box back together. Once you're invested, they're worth it, but nothing will match the ramp-up from season 1 to 2 to 3, so I'm glad you're giving it another go. There's a LOT of stuff they did seed in the first season to pay off later, so it's fun to binge it and see them bear fruit faster and without the need for weekly recaps or some annoying fan forum to break it all down. [edit] I'm being intentionally reductive about the overall characters and story as it goes on because honestly even just the ending of season 2 was spoiled, but at the time it was such a massive  moment. I don't really want to kill any of those for newcomers without just filling this thing with enough spoilers to look like it's all redacted - or maybe that's how I'll effortpost the OP if I do it.
SamBishop fucked around with this message at 05:14 on Mar 18, 2023 |
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Mar 18, 2023 05:01
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Holy poo poo, I really didn't expect this thread to keep going after it kinda died down originally after Reddick's passing! That's FANTASTIC that there have been more watchthroughs, I'm so happy! I actually checked in because on tonight's Colbert episode, there was a random shot during an interview I was half-watching and it was so perfect for this thread when this happened: I gotta read back and reply! Woo hoo!!  SamBishop fucked around with this message at 10:33 on Apr 18, 2023 |
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Apr 18, 2023 10:30
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Webbeh posted:This is another example of the very annoying shuffling FOX did with the early season running order. It’s kind boggling an executive looked at this and thought it was the right approach. Keep in mind this was (might be? I haven't watched a show there in literally like a decade) the era where FOX just opted to gently caress with episode order on all their shows like they had any idea what they were doing. They didn't, and as Jerusalem mentioned, Firefly was just one show that wasn't even a half season and they STILL hosed with the episode order. You guys all eventually got to the hilarious "Charlie is randomly alive again" thing in S2, but yeah, the show was not without major problems - many more behind the scenes even on production, as it sounds, which really makes me sad. Another thing to remember is that this show was PERMA-BUBBLED; it was always on the verge of being cancelled, but fan fervor sort of kept it limping along, so the fact that it even made it to Season 5 is a small miracle. This is never more evident in the decrease of episodes from the first couple of seasons, though that was more of television as a whole shortening. Still majorly budget-related. Jerusalem posted:The 1980s opening credits in season 2 is loving amazing This was my phone ringtone from the second it aired until about... 2018 when my dad passed and it just made for a bad thematic reminder (my SA username is my real name, so this show resonated HARD with me on a lot of levels). It replaced the Duck Tales Moon Theme as the thing I wanted to hear most when I got a phone call for a VERY long stretch, though. Alhazred posted:Finished the show and one of the worst things about it is Astrid. Not that Astrid is bad, but that she's hardly a character. There's no depth or arc to her, she's just there to occasionally come up with an idea that helps the main characters come up with a solution. The alternate Astrid was much better in that regards, she got an entire episode where she dealt with her complex feelings about her father's death. I don't disagree at all, as I think I said when I was trying to summarize the show in the OP, but I'm really glad they at least used The B universe to let Jasika have some range. She really killed it in that episode. Oasx posted:John Noble was the best actor on tv for a good 4-5 years during this strech. Unquestionably the most committed, talented and nuanced actor on TV during the entire run. It's BONKERS to go back and see that he'd already sort of figured Walter's whole thing out and adjusted accordingly along the way from early days to losing/stealing Peter to incarceration to getting part of his brain back all while working out who Walternate had become. He should have walked away with SO many more awards. zer0spunk posted:ok, here's a positive post I wanted to save this one for last, but White Tulip is arguably one of the best single episodes of a show you can show someone sight-unseen ever made. It's entirely self-contained in the best possible way because all of the characters are explained enough for anyone new and anyone who already knows them gets more depth into them. It's beautifully acted and if you've been along for the ride for the whole show up until that moment, the letter reveal at the end is just a massive waterfall. It's INCREDIBLY beautiful and pays off even more in subsequent episodes and then of course in the final season. It's perfect TV.
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Apr 18, 2023 10:54
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Open Source Idiom posted:?? There were twenty two episodes produced for every season except the final one, which got a full half season. I legit have no idea what I was smoking (Brown Betty?) when I wrote that. I could have sworn it got cut WAY down as the show went on, but I literally binged it alongside all you guys and I distinctly remember being thrown that stuff I thought happened in later seasons was happening in earlier ones. They are meaty seasons, to be sure, so despite the show being sort of on the cliff's edge for most of its run, they at least got full season orders when they renewed save for that final one to finish things out because of fan outcry when the show was gonna get canned and then Fox recanted the decision. Open Source Idiom posted:I remember the show had some pretty tight gore / production design at times, like the marionette design from the episode of the same name, or the effects they applied to Rebecca Mader's face in the season four finale. Nothing Hannibal level, but it almost certainly was pushing the watershed with what they were allowed to do. I really wish we had a watershed here in the States, but it's barely a thing these days with "prime time" anymore. The old "NYPD Blue showed a butt!" stuff did indeed lead the way to them just relaxing what can be said/shown at night, but America has pretty much never had a gore issue because we have the most insane, ridiculous ideas of what passes as offensive. No titties, and god help you if you use a naughty word, but fill a dude full o' holes with every weapon you can imagine! It's comically out of whack. Perestroika posted:I'm fairly deep into season 3 now, and while it's still solid fun I gotta say some of the decisions they made are kinda losing me a bit. The whole thing with people's emotions causing vortices and Peter and Olivia being star-crossed lovers since childhood whose relationship will determine the fate of the universe is probably intended to be poetic, but frankly just comes off as melodramatic. Sure, the show always leaned into the weird, but usually it at least tried to stay vaguely grounded in halfway feasible concepts. At this point they seem determined to just go with gently caress it people are energy and energy is magic. I don't want to turn you off from the show, but I'll say none of that really gets any better. They lean into a lot of it, in fact, and you sorta either roll with it or understandably bounce off. I would say if anything the show got sappier as it went on, but that also allowed the Peter/Walter relationship to mature to a place where some of the sentimentality hits a lot better. Literally everything you mentioned, though, only gets thicker as the show goes on; conventions and such made it pretty plain that the heart of the show outweighed the science that they were trying to balance earlier on. I'm thankful that the series got to continue at all, but there was literally a time where they would repackage episodes for science teachers to show in school and provide explanations of the real-world basis for the stuff that was happening. It was a neat idea, but, uh, mostly untenable as it progressed. SamBishop fucked around with this message at 10:09 on Apr 19, 2023 |
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Apr 19, 2023 10:06
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